Armored Cav (Tom Clancy's Military Reference) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Ever since the first warrior padded himself with leather to ward off the blows of a rival's weapon, there has been an endless struggle between..." (more)
Key Phrases: combination armor, independent thermal viewer, armor package, Tom Clancy, General Franks, Desert Storm (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A penetrating look inside an armored cavalry regiment--the technology, the strategies, and the people... profiled by Tom Clancy.

His first nonfiction book, Submarine, captured the reality of life aboard a nuclear warship. Now, the #1 bestselling author of Clear and Present Danger portrays today's military as only army personnel can know it.

With the same compelling, you-are-there immediacy of his acclaimed fiction, Tom Clancy provides detailed descriptions of tanks, helicopters, artillery, and more--the brilliant technology behind the U. S. Army. He captures military life--from the drama of combat to the daily routine--with total accuracy, and reveals the roles and missions that have in recent years distinguished our fighting forces.

Armored Cav includes:

• Descriptions of the M1A2 Main Battle Tank, the AH-64A Apache Attack Helicopter, and more
• An interview with General Frederick Franks
• Strategies behind the Desert Storm account
• Exclusive photograph, illustrations and diagrams

PLUS: From West Point cadet to Desert Storm commander, an interview with a combat cavalry officer on the rise.

From Library Journal

Today's cavalry has traded four-hoofed mounts for heavily armored tanks, fighting vehicles, and helicopters in a combined arms force that is prepared for combat against much larger forces. In this report, noted technothriller novelist Clancy takes readers on a tour of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He explores the delicacies found in an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) and describes such hardware as the Abrams battle tank, the Apache helicopter, and the nine-millimeter Beretta pistol. Through interviews with General Franks of the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command and Captain McMaster of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, the author reveals what life was like during the Persian Gulf War. Clancy's thorough research makes a persuasive case for maintaining a strong post-Cold War military. For all public libraries and many academic libraries.
Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade; First Edition edition (November 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425158365
• ISBN-13: 978-0425158364
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #336,271 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Global, go-anywhere Cavalry with combined arms effects, August 21, 2000

By	Sam Damon Jr. (Fort Bragg, NC) - See all my reviews

Its hard to compress more information in one small book than Clancy has done in Armored Cav, if you want to quibble with details write your own book and do better! Clancy has to take what he's been given and make an educated opinion of things to say what he has to say. He is wrong about the M551 Sheridan and the BFV for example, but that's ok, he has no direct personal experience.

This is a good REFERENCE book to quickly educate whoever it is you are teaching, which includes America's Soldiers who are still taught by rote memorization their specific tools and not the context of the modern battlefield--Clancy expresses the heavy fight here better than anyone so far. This is a fight with an armor versus firepower versus mobility struggle at its core, and its equipment driven. His biggest failing is not starting with the tracked tank in WWI and progressing through to Vietnam and giving us the historical context of Cavalry and how light tanks and tracked APCs in the jungles of Southeast Asia rumbled all over the countryside and trounced the enemy with light casualties. He avoids this controversy seeking instead to "plant the seeds" of a lighter, more rapidly deployable air-cavalry by describing the M8 "Buford" Armored Gun System as a replacement for the M551 Sheridan light tank, and conveniently not mentioning the latter was parachute airdropped into combat by the 3/73d Armor BN attached to the 82d Airborne Division for Panama. He then doesn't even mention the M8 in Airborne!, his other non-fiction U.S. Army book. This is a serious oversight. Clearly, Clancy knows the Armored Cav he is writing about is too heavy to rapidly deploy and he is trying to "nudge" it in the right direction without the 2-D tanker-mentality realizing it will have to fly in aircraft and parachute jump and have a negative knee-jerk reaction. But by not describing how U.S. armored vehicles were inferior in some ways to German tanks in WWII, Clancy fails to explain why we went overboard with the M1/M2-M3 families, creating the not-enough armor inferiority complex which drives many in Armor branch which has made the force too heavy to move and irrelevent in a world that moves by air.

However the "silver lining" in this "cloud", is that Clancy explains how the Armored Cav is a mini-combined arms team; with almost all the elements of combat power and if he had the history covered up front (easy to do---get Iron Chariots author Ralph Zumbro and add to the beginning) he could have shown that this combined-arms organization came out of WWII mechanized cavalry experiences when we had to fight for our reconnaissance. Clancy needs to mention briefly how the 1st Cavalry Division was once a helicopter Air Cavalry Division and what went wrong in Vietnam and why it reverted back to a heavy formation.

If you pay attention you will see that Major MacGregor was the S-3 for the Desert Storm armored fight described--he is now Colonel Douglas MacGregor whose book, "Breaking he Phalanx" enlightened the entire Army to the benefits of combining arms on a permanent basis--its his Cavalry mentality that is the inspiration behind the Army's current Brigade Combat Team "transformation" effort. Of course, it cost Colonel MacGregor his career for writing the book because he had a few ideas that were best not presented.

This book is a best-seller; I see no reason why it couldn't be updated with a history of mechanized cavalry to the present (pay attention to what the 11th ACR in Vietnam did), the portions on the M551 Sheridan/M8 AGS corrected and it taking on some new ideas and present the need for a lighter tracked AFV equipped "Global Cavalry" (not on road bound armored car wheels) that would be air-transportable in BOTH USAF fixed-wing aircraft and Army helicopters to effect decisive, 3-Dimensional maneuver capabilities. Such a 3-D force would be the ideal compliment to a heavier, 2-D force (not all of the force to conserve weight for strategic lift) composed of M1/M2s. The 3-D/2-D combination would make this force the force of choice for the 21st century.

Update this, book Mr. Clancy!!!

Airborne!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lacking, March 9, 2002

By A Customer

I'm all for anything Cav related. But this one could have been done a lot better had Mr. Clancey taken the time to set down and talk one on one with the rank and file Armored Cav troopers. While his technical details of the weapons used in a Cav unit are quite accurate, his explanation of how they are used is at times far fetched. The kicker for me was when at the end of the book Mr. CLancey examined a hostage resuce situation in which an Armored Cav unit is parachuted into a soccer field to snatch the hostages. After 11 years in the U.S. Army, serving in both the 82nd ABN and an Armored Cav unit I'm fairly certain that the Airforce hasn't the capbilities to drop either an M 1 Abrams nor Bradley fighting vechicle from the back of a C-130 nor a C-141. And the ideal of using a soccer field as a drop zone is a workable one but only if your talking about an A team or Seal team using High altitude low opening parachute techniques. I'm glad Mr. Clancey is giving some credit to our armed forces, I just wish that he would do more research on these projects and quit relying on his name to sell books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clancy establishes the core of being an Armored Cav Trooper., September 18, 1997

By	[e-mail] "azmish" (Scottsdale, Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews

As a former "Brave Rifle" who served with this unit in the late '60s and early '70s, Clancy accurately portrays life in the 3d Armored Cav unit. I found his style brought back to me ALL the thoughts, feelings and memories of those days. I felt I was still leading my platoon thur the land of Ft. Lewis, WA. Mr. Clancy painted a pictures that was precise, truthful, and described the experience of Troppers who worked hard at what they did to serve our country